20 January 2006
The National Patient Safety Agency has no powers to investigate private hospitals and treatment centres, despite the increasing numbers of NHS patients they treat, a committee of MPs heard on January 16.
The incongruity emerged as Sir Nigel Crisp, chief executive of the NHS, and Susan Williams, joint chief executive of the NPSA, attempted to defend the agency against criticisms from the National Audit Office and the Commons' Public Accounts Committee that it was poor value for money.
The NPSA's £10m National Reporting and Learning System was established in 2005 – two years late – as a means to collect information and share learning on the estimated 106,000 'patient safety incidents' that occur across NHS acute, ambulance and mental health trusts each year.
MPs were angry that even after the delay, at least 35 trusts had still not reported their accident rates to the NPSA by August 2005, and others appeared to be under-reporting.
Following questions from Jon Trickett, Labour MP for Hemsworth, the committee heard that the agency currently had no arrangements to collect information from private health providers.
'What we're doing… is first of all starting with the NHS with the intention of then moving on to the independent sector,' explained Williams. 'Our remit extends to wherever NHS care is funded…[but] at the moment we're concentrating on NHS hospitals.'
Trickett reacted with dismay: 'We're committed to a number of patients going to the independent sector. But we've no idea how many accidents take place in the various hospitals which are being offered by the GPs.'
Crisp said that contracts for the independent sector treatment centres included similar reporting duties to those required of NHS bodies.
Trickett told Public Finance: 'Patients are being offered a choice of hospitals… but the independent hospitals appear to have no scrutiny regime at all. It could be that a very unsafe hospital is being recommended, unbeknown, by the GP, because no regime is in place.'
National Audit Office chief Sir John Bourn told the committee: 'We've not yet reached the point where we can say that value for money has been secured… because we do not yet have a national system of analysis and sharing lessons which is fully used.'
PFjan2006
